


Happy At Home (You're My Best Friend)

by Renee_Mariposa



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Bible references, Blasphemy, Existentialism, Introspection, M/M, Meta, Pre-Slash, Religious Discussion, Stream of Consciousness, can also be read as
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-31 18:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20798840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renee_Mariposa/pseuds/Renee_Mariposa
Summary: As if Crowley’s weight - the burden of his trust! - were a shield to protect him, Aziraphale carefully, tentatively allows himself to think about things he habitually turned away from, allows himself to follow his line of thought through to conclusions he hadn’t dared before. They were, after all, in uncharted territory. The end of the world…averted! Quite unheard of. Quite wonderful!





	Happy At Home (You're My Best Friend)

**Author's Note:**

> Behold, the one billionth fic of What Happened In The Missing Scenes Of Episode Six.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale does a lot of thinking on the bus ride home.

The bus’s immense wheels hit a pothole, causing the whole conveyance to lurch disagreeably to one side for a brief moment then lurch back aright. Aziraphale barely manages to keep himself steady in his seat and looks quickly to his side to see if Crowley has noticed.

The demon is slumped habitually in his seat, head resting on Aziraphale’s shoulder as if the angel had given him open permission to place it there, breathing deeply and heavily, still fast asleep. His glasses are askew - liable to be lost without intervention - and after a moment of deliberation, the angel oh-so-carefully slides them off his nose and folds them into the demon’s breast pocket. Aziraphale can feel the weight of Crowley’s head on his shoulder, but it feels like more than just physical mass pressed in towards the core of the earth by gravity, stopped only by Aziraphale’s physical form. It feels like a far greater weight - the weight of immense trust, perhaps! For as often as Crowley said he indulged in this particular quirk, Aziraphale had never actually witnessed it happening for himself.

And it is a truly strange thing to witness! It was as if the body wore Crowley’s clothes and hair and smell but was completely vacant of the demon himself. Aziraphale could barely recognize him in this state: face lax and guileless, body free of his particular mannerisms. No, not guileless: distilled of worry and left with pure innocence. He’s reminded of some Tibetan Buddhist teachings he read once: it went something along the lines of, ‘All phenomena are constantly in motion, constantly changing, absolutely impermanent. What we call a ‘rose’ is actually the perceived movement of electrons: to still them and try to make the electrons permanent would destroy the thing we’re trying to preserve.’ It doesn’t make a lot of sense when he tries to pin down what it means, but what _he_ means is: maybe Crowley is only Crowley when he’s in motion and to preserve him in an unmoving state takes away what he is.

The bus hits another bump and Aziraphale stabilizes Crowley as best he can. He wishes he had the energy for a minor miracle and wonders if, when he gets home, he’ll sleep too.

_Home_. What is home now?

_The bookshop burned down,_ Crowley had told him, and the memory feels like a quiet, thin blade sliding between his ribs and tearing through the ventricles of his body’s heart. Those shelves and piles of books, lovingly (if haphazardly - he’d always _meant_ to tidy!) stored and painstakingly catalogued, well-read and worn by the years…never to be read again! His own Library of Alexandria: books discovered and collected with great care, but fated to be eaten mercilessly by flames. He had gained back the world but lost…well, a part of his soul! The knife tears a little bit farther. And Crowley, who had no particular love for books nor bookshops, had looked positively stricken at the words.

_You can stay with me, if you like._ That had been the first weight of trust, verbal rather than physical. It feels...like a gift! Well, he doesn’t have a choice, does he? To refuse means he’s…well, homeless, not to put too fine a point on it! But he certainly appreciates the gesture nonetheless. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen the inside of Crowley’s flat before - in the past, they’ve either chosen to drink Out or at the Bookshop, never at Crowley’s...perhaps the demon had brought polaroids over, once? He can’t remember what it looks like but he can remember the impression that he wouldn’t want to be there except when Crowley is there, for he makes the place’s oddness acceptable.

What a funny ol’ world it is, an Angel taking shelter with a Demon, he thinks reflexively, in one of Crowley’s silly voices, stifling his laughter as to not wake the demon himself. In the amused silence that follows, he finds himself thinking with crystal clarity: “The lion lying down with the lamb is nothing!” 

He immediately turns his mind away from the thought, as if burned by it - as it is perhaps blasphemy! One oughtn’t...It just isn’t done! Certainly not by an angel!

And in any case, they live in two worlds, one above and one below, and never the twain shall meet - two beings separated by an abyss by the Almighty herself, one being of the Light, the other Cast Down to wiggle in the dirt, one only capable of Right and the other only capable of Iniquity…

But…Aziraphale shifts in his seat, mindful of Crowley’s weight, and oh-so-carefully allows himself, in the humming silence, to articulate the intervening thought quietly to himself: that wasn’t all true, was it? They’d been living in the same world for some time now...six thousand years! Give or take. Living in the same world, pulled in overlapping orbits like one of Crowley’s binary stars…and drawing in closer with each orbit, if he was to be honest with himself. Drawing in closer…but to what? Sitting on a park bench the whole glorious day and talking (arguing!) with delight about nothing in particular?

_We’re on our own side now, angel._

Aziraphale is prickled with a sensation that is both slightly fearful and…something that isn’t fear but triggers his body’s adrenaline response anyway. They may have averted Armageddon but, in a way, everything that came before is gone. The Bentley, the Bookshop…to say nothing of his Heavenly Purpose On This Earth. The world has changed, irrevocably! _His_ world, at any rate. Heaven’s purpose was to finish the war, destroy the earth, and now that’s...gone! His purpose was to fight, to triumph over his Adversary, and now…he, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, had put his foot down, refused to fight, and now his Adversary is drooling on his shoulder, trusting him in a measure beyond words! 

There are skirmishes breaking out - only a few, but there’s battle nonetheless, they’re making him itch - and Aziraphale can’t help but feel that a sword is hanging over their two heads, a guillotine blade in unsteady hands, liable to fall at any moment. He suppresses a shiver.

...What is he going to do now?

Presumably, human life will go on: being born and dying, pulled into their place eternal as helped by the greater Influence. Aziraphale tries to comfort himself with the knowledge that he’ll go back to run-of-the-mill salvation...and comes up empty. He hasn’t felt instrumental in human salvation for...for...he can’t remember the last soul he had any real part in saving. He is one being, one molecule, in a sea of humanity; even his most strenuous actions are...pebbles in a desert! Crowley was right...humans got on well enough alone. Especially with the two of them cancelling each other out!

He tries to imagine how tomorrow will go, and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on, but it only serves to gum up his mental apparatus for about twenty minutes before he gives it up as a bad job and puts it away. He feels saturated with uncertainty, exhausted with it. After a week of fear and hope fighting bitterly within him, he's almost numb to panic, desensitized to the ideas that have caused him fear for so long. As if Crowley’s weight - the burden of his trust! - were a shield to protect him, Aziraphale carefully, tentatively allows himself to think about things he habitually turned away from, allows himself to follow his line of thought through to conclusions he hadn’t dared before. They were, after all, in uncharted territory. The end of the world…averted! Quite unheard of. Quite wonderful! 

The problem weighing upon him, of course, is this: through his whole existence, Aziraphale had been told that they, the heavenly host, do not _have_ choices, they have only the Path laid out before them, isn’t that just lovely and simple? Just follow the Path, and do what you’re told, and everything will turn out alright.

(Again, thinking this carefully as if Internal Affairs will jump out and charge him with blasphemy then and there!) But that wasn’t true at all, was it? Distressing as _that_ thought was. Humans have an infinity of choices at every moment - living on earth had showed the angel that - and in seeing how choices actually _work_, he had come to understand: he _himself_ has choices, just as much as the humans have. For instance - if he were being truly honest with himself - today, of all days, was a day to be honest! - he’d chosen to hand over the sword to humanity…yes, he hadn’t been expressly forbidden to do it, but he’d done it without orders. It could be very well implied that he was just making an executive decision, but that’s just the problem, isn’t it? To make a decision implies a choice. _Taking initiative_ was making a choice (to disrupt the status quo!). All these centuries, all these millennia, he’d known in the back of his mind that he’d been making a choice to speak to...be honest!...frat- associate with- to have an Arrangement with! Crowley, and that had, definitively, been the _wrong_ choice if his superiors could be believed. But he had kept making that choice, fully believing that if he didn’t _acknowledge_ he was making a choice, didn’t _think_ about the choice he was making, then it wouldn’t come under the purvey of his superiors. If he wasn’t _consciously_ making his decision to upset How Things Were Done, then he couldn’t be reprimanded.

So, he could admit he had made choices, in willful opposition to what his superiors mandated. That in itself is bad enough...but deeper undercurrents of fear prickle at him: had he made the _right_ choices? Even worse: was _Heaven_ making _wrong_ choices, since (based on the party line up to this point!) only one of them could be correct? Since only one of them could be right, which one...? Was Heaven itself...standing in defiance of God?

…It is too horrible to think about. He puts it from his mind for a more inebriated time. 

Oh! he had so fervently hoped the war was just a goal favored by bloodthirsty outliers. It had hurt, like a tree trunk split by lightning, when the Metatron had stomped out his last hope that there was any consideration for humanity through the vaults of Heaven - when it was made clear that he, Aziraphale, was in the minority regarding the desire to avert the war. 

Did he not belong in Heaven anymore? Had he Fallen?

He’d found through the centuries that his body doesn’t _need_ to breathe but when the conflagration of fear seems likely to devour him, inhaling steadily and exhaling completely in controlled cycles produces a calming effect that he is quite grateful for. He does this now, glad that his wave of panic didn’t wake Crowley. He’d been taught that it is impossible for angels to do wrong, as demons can do no right, but after all of this time that adage rings woefully hollow even disregarding the current _philosophical dichotomy_ between him and his superiors. If his fellow angels were to be believed, Crowley was evil incarnate! But…what truly about the demon’s behavior could be called ‘evil’ (especially after seeing millennia of how evil humans could be)? He had a wicked sense of humor, perhaps, but he was not malicious. Never malicious! Never cruel! Aziraphale can still remember how distressed he’d been about the children, how aghast that Heaven had _no_ consideration... If that distress for the defenseless was ‘evil’, then what could be called ‘good’? Heaven maintained that it held a monopoly on Good - no one else could be good, not even humanity: humans had their own inferior good. Aziraphale could hardly reconcile the difference between Heaven’s Good and Humanity’s Good, after all the time he’s lived here - they were, truthfully, polar opposites! Well, in some things. It was all muddled in his mind! The good intentions of Heaven caused immeasurable misery, in patterns unpredictable. Humanity’s Good (the 'inferior good') sought to shield the weak, the hungry, the ill from predation - the last being first! And the malice of hell could bring blessing, on occasion! It didn’t make any sense based on what he’d been taught. He’d given the sword away out of concern for Eve’s safety…bringing War - such incalculable suffering - to humanity! It was almost too terrible to think about. 

It was as if…one’s (everyone’s!) decisions had innumerable consequences, utterly beyond one’s control, utterly ignoring one’s intentions. He’d like to think that the Almighty would intervene in extreme cases but...what was more extreme than the end of the world? She said She loved Her creation, but She was willing to let it be destroyed? Willing to let oceans of blood be spilled and the Earth be torn asunder in the name of revenge? If he had seen such behavior in humans (which he had!) he would never call that behavior ‘loving’. Not in a thousand years. Not in a million! But he’d turned a blind eye nonetheless. Simply because She was the Almighty! The Plan truly was ineffable...truly inscrutable! 

And there was the heart of his frustration: how was one to Follow The Path when it was inscrutable? His superiors maintained that there was a correct way to follow the path and an incorrect way...but not a single bloody one of them knew which was right or wrong until all was said and done! And furthermore! All that had existed by way of Paths up to now was an infinite football pitch, stretching from one horizon to another, without lines or flags or signposts or neon to show the way. And _no_ instruction manuals, nor maps! Marvellous human inventions, those. If humans could invent those things, and invent ways to distribute them widely, then a lack of those objects and machinations on the behalf of the Almighty was...quite telling, really!

He instinctively scolds himself for such a thought, but then, with great effort, freezes his chastisement mid-word, because a new thought had occurred to him. It was, frankly, a petrifying thought. It felt rather like…newly-Spoken light dividing darkness from the face of the deep: terrifying and exhilarating and irrevocably changing! He had thought to himself: what if the Almighty had put into Her ineffable plan that he and Crowley were to come together and be on their own side, on humanity’s side? 

That, in the darkest hour, they would take the Antichrist’s hands in their own and help avert the Apocalypse by giving the boy the support he needed? That the Almighty had been testing them, along with humanity? What then?

Even more terrifying: what if the Almighty was a parent who, thinking they’d raised their child jolly well, took a Completely Hands-Off approach with Her children? What then!

What if there was no Plan at all?

But he shies rapidly away from that last thought, because it was mostly completely terrifying with no wonderfulness at all, and brings himself back to the matter at hand.

He knows, in his heart of hearts, that Crowley believes in a Plan, though the demon is usually angry about (rather than pacified by) its existence. Perhaps that is the core difference between angels and demons: for one, the Plan causes relief, for the other, resentment!

…In Crowley’s defense (if he’s going to continue being honest), what the demon is angry about isn’t the existence of the Plan…it’s cruelty and suffering dressed up as the Plan and allowed to happen (the self-blinded eye being turned!) simply because it is supposed to be the Plan. Regardless of his protestations regarding Niceness, cruelties (human and otherwise) cut into the demon mercilessly, hurt him in ways that Aziraphale could only begin to understand. A million injuries without the balm of a Plan, without a spoken guarantee that Everything Will Work Out, the Almighty Will Make It Right. 

...But there had been no divine intervention whatsoever! ..It had been Worked Out, Made Right by no one but themselves…they had done the unthinkable and defied the Great Plan... They’d averted the apocalypse through...well, through sheer bullheadedness! The sheerest dumb luck!

The cards really had been stacked against them…Aziraphale catches sight of himself in the bus window, glowing strangely in the low lights, and remembers - vividly! - seeing himself in Madame Tracy’s glass. What a charming woman! ...He was really, very lucky she was so amiable. Otherwise the possession might’ve been impossible...but the fact remains that the possession had _worked_, regardless if only demons had done it in the past…he’d once heard someone say, _after all, angels and demons came from the same stock_…if an angel and a demon aren’t so different, then…

His gaze slides from the reflection back to Crowley. There’s still dirt and gravel on his suit from falling to the ground, what, twice? The last in terror, the first in anguish. ...Aziraphale wonders to himself if the Bentley would’ve liked the viking funeral it ended up receiving. It had died with its boots on, as it were...with admirable style! No denying it. It had truly lived...well, died up to it’s master’s standards. The demon will likely remember that proudly, with bittersweet fondness, after he slowly sheds his initial grief...he supposes Crowley will have to get a new car and teach it how to like music and drive itself when Crowley isn’t paying attention. He feels a stab of sympathetic pain for the demon. Even if he was a living terror driving it! It was a miracle he hadn’t hit anyone…perhaps Aziraphale had worked a miracle – unknowingly! Wouldn’t that be something.

It occurs to Aziraphale then that Crowley had probably been hurting for rather a long time! Increasingly more due to recent events, Earthly and Heavenly - a mass of human cruelties multiplying as the population grew, angels hellbent on bringing about The End of the World. To say nothing of his own…smugness! It is a physical pain to think about. Crowley had known the truth the whole time, tried to tell him, but he had not the ears to hear...he was self-deafened, self-blinded - he’d hardened his heart like Pharoh…_foolish principalitee_...How could he be so stupid, indeed! And he had been so horribly smug about it all, in effect telling Crowley to his face that he didn’t care if he lost the demon forever...lies! Damned lies! Cruelties inflicted - knowingly!

He could understand how cruelties and lies and the whole lot would become overwhelming. He’d read once that over-sleeping was a symptom of depression…sleeping through an entire century was more than a _bit_of oversleep. And he’d _never_ seen Crowley in such a state as that Soho pub, while he himself was scrambling for a body to possess. Misery - radiating outward in waves! It was a wonder the humans in the pub hadn’t drowned in it! Such a change from the lighthearted, clear-eyed, newly-transformed snake muttering about lead balloons...

It was, perhaps, the Crucifixion that marked the change between the demon he’d first met and the Crowley he knows now - he didn’t start covering his eyes, for instance, until after that long, gruesome, terrible afternoon. He was markedly more irritable after that, more cynical. And the _dreadful_ business with the Holy Water…Aziraphale doesn’t want to dwell on it. He’d blessed the stuff reluctantly, with a heart heavier than he’d ever felt, but he’d done it because he’d been asked to - by someone whose well-being he cared about immensely! More than anything. More than everything!

He tries to imagine spending time with Crowley without feeling a sharp edge of fear that he’ll be rebuked by his superiors. He almost can’t imagine it. It usually takes quite a lot of very good wine for that fear to retreat far back enough that he can pay it no mind. Imagine – meeting the demon without spending the whole time rehearsing his excuses should he be questioned about it. He’s already been reprimanded, informally – he pushes away the memory of dread turning into near-panic at being cornered, bullied in the street! – and after his first act of, well _conscientious objection_, he’s feeling a little stronger than he had before. A little bolder.

In the bar, Crowley - sodden with misery and whatever he was drinking - had said he’d just lost his best friend. He’d said it like it broke him! ...Aziraphale was of two minds about this. On one hand, they’d just had a rather terrible row and people who were fighting usually didn’t refer to the friend who’d verbally slapped-them-across-the-face-and-threw-them-out-on-their-ear as their Best Friend in such a voice. On the other hand…Crowley made rather a point of avoiding his fellow demons - not a friendly lot - Humans were passing interests at best, which Crowley freely acknowledged - and Aziraphale knew with conviction there wasn’t an angel in Heaven who would give the demon the time of day...

_How long have we been friends?_ Six thousand years! Orbiting in tightening concentric circles… _Would I lie to you?_ Never. Maybe an obfuscation, but never willful deception! _We’ve got a lot in common, you and me..._ Aziraphale had hardened his heart against him...he can see now how stupid he’d been after discovering the book of prophecy. Hindsight...Crowley had needed him and he’d outright lied to him! Had taken advantage of his trust! He’d been so blind…

_My best friend…_

...It’s your best friend with whom you drink quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol when you’ve kick-started the end of the world…with whom you plot to avert What Has Been Written…who you trust to help you find the Antichrist you’ve mislaid...

Crowley had called _him_ his best friend in that broken voice, hadn’t he? In a roundabout way, but who bloody else could he have lost that day the bookstore burned? …He’d called Aziraphale his best friend…_we could go off together_...Aziraphale was the demon’s only friend! As Crowley was his... But to be called his best…

It’s your best friend you ask to help you when everything the two of you hold dear is going to be destroyed…It’s your best, dearest friend you beg to run away with you when forces beyond your control conspire to tear you apart from one another… 

At the bandstand, hearing Crowley’s...plea, really - _we could go…_ \- it had never occurred to him, never once - never crossed his mind, never even presented itself as the slightest possibility of an option - that he and Crowley could just up and leave everything behind them. That they could go off together! It’s utterance had as deep and profound an effect on him as _Let there be light…!_ upon the face of creation. In that moment it had been suggested - what had been his _very first_ thought…? _Wither thou goest I will…!_

A chime rings over the PA and Aziraphale is pulled from his thoughts. After some visual investigation, he realizes that their stop is very close. He lifts a hand and regretfully shakes Crowley to bleary wakefulness. It takes the demon almost ten minutes to become coherent, which makes Aziraphale glad he thought ahead - the driver _did_ come all this way and he doesn’t want to be more of a bother than necessary. He’s got just enough energy - he’ll make sure to miracle her a way free of traffic so she can make up the time. It might not be enough but it’s the best he can do in this state.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bible verses are from the New KJV for the most part. I wanted them to be as 'old-timey' as possible.
> 
> For me, Aziraphale's story in the TV show is a deconversion narrative and that's why I loved the show. I'm drawing from my own experience and trying to expand on that in this fic.
> 
> The writing style here is my attempt to capture the flight-of-thought style from Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford. I'm obsessed with that book. In fact, I've straight-up plagiarized sections of that book in this fic, so it's a good thing I'm doing this for free. Parade's End was written in the 1920s and it is almost impossible to understand - I hope I captured the emotional aspect of it rather than the incomprehensible aspect.
> 
> This has not been beta'd or britpicked....I am not british -and all the british slang I know is from the Sherlock fandom (lmao) - so if there's anything terribly egregious, let me know.


End file.
